The Witches of Appendix N: August Derleth

August Derleth is not really one of my favorite authors. But he has two redeeming qualities.First are his Solar Pons stories. They are a pastische of the Sherlock Holmes stories and could be easily dismissed, but I found them rather fun. I like to think, in a rather comical and completely unfair fashion, that all the negative stereotypes attributed to Holmes come from Pons. That is not true of course, but it amuses me. In truth I sometimes found Pons more approachable than Holmes. But that is not really the topic of today.Second, it is largely due to Derleth that we know H.P. Lovecraft. He republished his works and contributed a lot (of good and bad) material to what has been dubbed The Cthulhu mythos. While Derleth did a good job with pastiches of Holmes, despite his personal connection to Lovecraft, his "pastiches" of the Cthulhu mythos never quite lived up. Now, Derleth was a very prolific writer, and I can't even pretend I have gone through all his works. He has written with…